Music, Lyrics and Religion

I just googled ‘music and lyrics the movie’ and there were over 36 million resulting pages/articles. Now that’s impressive by any online standard. During the movie there is a scene where a cheesy teeny pop star by the name of Cora using a seated statue of Buddha as her main background/stage props. The image of Buddha has all of a sudden become this chic commodity, something that Europeans have embraced for all the wrong reasons.

The image of Buddha has been used in many contexts in the recent past that includes bars, music, films and even as a sign that divides the male and female toilets at a restaurant in Germany.

We don’t come across ‘Jesus bars/pubs’ or the head of Jesus being used as an ornament in a garden. But why are eastern symbols, especially of Buddha’s used in such weird ways? I really don’t know the answer to this. As a man of the world, I know that some people like to receive attention even at someone else’s expense. Moreover, I know that this is a day and age where most men lack originality so they get caught up in trying to be creative by using a widely respected belief totally out of context.

I was watching the music and lyrics movie with wifey today and as mentioned above, one of the scenes had a massive statue of Buddha as a prop on stage for a cheesy rock concert. Once the statue turned, out came a lass clad in mere rags from the back of the statue. Imagine if the prop was of Lord Jesus and if a woman wearing a bikini sprung out of his back? Will this be accepted by the pontiffs around the world?

Then again, we live in a democratic world and freedom of expression is a right that anyone can exercise. How ever what people tend to forget is that this right has to be exercised responsibly without undermining or hurting someone else’s belief.

Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a teaching, hence there’s lack of control and more chances of it being misused for pleasure of another. A person who sees differently can always misuse someone else’s belief. Maybe that’s why Hitler used the Hindu symbol ‘swastika’ as the symbol for the Nazi party of Germany.

The love for ancient symbols is one way of trying to find one’s origins. For some others it’s a way of being creative. What ever it is, man’s love for curiosity and stupidity hangs on a mere thread and his love for attention will not slip away to the doldrums that easily.

For a pessimist, this movie would be an utter humiliation but for the optimist in me, the Google search I did gave me some hope. In a day and age where curiosity creates interest, having 36 million people search for a movie that has a scene with a cheesy singer with her background prop as Lord Buddha is promising because if 1% of those 36 million searches for Lord Buddha, that makes it 360,000 hits for Buddhism.